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Harker: Digital Music Sales Continue Slide
April 10, 2014 at 6:47 AM (PT)
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In their latest blog post, the folks at HARKER RESEARCH note, "This month marks the eleventh anniversary of the launch of the iTUNES STORE. While APPLE didn’t invent music downloading, many mark the launch of the iTUNES STORE as the boost that moved downloading into the mainstream conscience.
"Downloading grew exponentially in the first few years that followed, but more recently growth has slowed. It became obvious a few years ago that if the deceleration of growth continued, sales could start to actually decline.
"Sure enough, after reaching a peak of 1.34 billion track sales in 2012, 2013 saw the first ever drop in digital music sales. According to NIELSEN’s SOUNDSCAN, digital track sales declined 5.7%, to 1.26 billion songs last year.
"Digital album sales, something that both APPLE and AMAZON have worked very hard to develop, were essentially flat at 117.6 million units."
Read the full post here.

